Staring at The Sun

As a younger man who came to America in the mid 1990’s wearing Canadian cutoff jean shorts, I enjoyed sunning myself. As I age, I try not to do that as much; especially during an eclipse.

Today the world will see the first partial eclipse of 2011. Africans and Europeans will witness it at sunrise. Russians and Chinese will get their eclipse at sunset.

No matter where you are in this world this morning, there it is – a new year, new investment opportunities, and new risks. If you are staring at a market price that’s already gone straight up in 2011, our best recommendation is to heed Jurrasic Park’s Jeff Goldblum’s risk management advice – don’t stare at it – it’s going to be a long race.

As market prices around the world race higher this morning, the sun is shining on the bulls. While I’m certainly not basking like Countrywide CEO Tan-gelo Mozilo did back in the day (my SPY short position is currently -3.80% against me), I’m as happy as the next clam who is long anything. Market prices that go lunar ahead of an eclipse are cool that way. Everybody gets paid.

In yesterday’s Early Look, I walked through our Hedgeye Asset Allocation Model. This morning I’ll focus on the Hedgeye Virtual Portfolio. They are 2 separate risk management products and I call them “virtual” because instead of running money, I run my mouth.

Currently the Hedgeye Portfolio is in what I consider a neutral position. We have 12 LONGS and 12 SHORTS.

As of last night’s close, our biggest un-realized winners and losers are:

Top Winner: LONG Starbucks (SBUX) = +188.63%

Top Loser: SHORT American Express (AXP) = -4.81%

Not unlike anyone who runs real money in this business, all of the positions I take in the Hedgeye Portfolio are marked-to-market every second of every day. Unlike most of the conflicted and compromised broker ratings and market pundits out there, we are accountable to every position we take.

Yesterday, I made the following risk management moves in the Hedgeye Portfolio:

Shorted Tech (XLK) on the Facebook “news” as it was immediate-term TRADE overbought

Shorted Industrials (XLI) after the sector closed up +25.5% in 2010 and was also immediate-term TRADE overbought

Bought US Treasury Curve Flattener (FLAT) as the yield spread continues to make what we call lower-highs at 274bps wide

Sold Suncor (SU) as the stock and commodity prices were hitting new highs (it too was immediate-term TRADE overbought)

Shorted Bank of America (BAC) on the “settlement news” after our Financials Sector Head, Josh Steiner, made a call on it

Booking gains and/or searching for new absolute return ideas on the long and short side is what risk managers do. Some people buy-and-hold. Some people day-trade. The market doesn’t really care what your style is – like an eclipse, it’s going to do what it is going to do.

While you may need to be staring directly into the sun right now to be willfully blind to Global Inflation Accelerating, you don’t need an eclipse to generate inflation when market prices are inflating. Post daisy dukes ditching at Yale, I paid my own room and board to learn that’s what happens when prices go up.

On the topic of inflation, while it will be interesting to read the Fed’s Minutes later on this afternoon, the rest of the world has already agreed with us that a +10% monthly spike in the 19 component CRB Commodities Index since the beginning of December to new highs of 333 yesterday is indeed inflationary.

In fact, in the last 24 hours these are the 2 words that the Brazilians and South Koreans used to describe inflations:

Brazil = “plague”

South Korea = “war”

We think they are serious. So is staring at the sun.

In addition to being long German Equities (EWG), US Healthcare(XLV), Oil (OIL), Sugar (SGG), and Treasury Inflation Protection (TIP), I remain bullish on American and Chinese Cash (UUP and CYB). I’m bearish on US Treasury bonds (SHY) and bearish on Gold (GLD) – those are 2 of the 12 positions in the Hedgeye Portfolio that were working for us yesterday. There’s always risk to be managed somewhere.

My immediate term support and resistance levels for the SP500 are now 1259 and 1273, respectively.

Best of luck out there today,

KM

Keith R. McCulloughChief Executive Officer

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01/04/11 07:36 AM EST

PRESS RELEASE: Hedgeye Names Bob Brooke as Managing Director of Business Development

THE HEDGEYE DAILY OUTLOOK

TODAY’S S&P 500 SET-UP - January 4, 2011

As we look at today’s set up for the S&P 500, the range is 14 points or -1.01% downside to 1259 and 0.09% upside to 1273. Economic data from around the world was bullish for equity markets as more evidence of continued improvements in the economy was seen. Equity futures are trading relatively in-line with fair value, despite gains in European and Asia.

MACRO DATA POINTS:

7.45am, ICSC weekly retail sales

10am, Factory Orders, Nov., est. -0.1%, prev. -0.9%

11am, U.S. Fed to purchase $1-$2b TIPS

11.30am, U.S. to sell 4-week bills

2pm, Minutes of FOMC Meeting

4.30pm, API Inventories

5pm, ABC Consumer Confidence, Jan. 2, prev. -44

TODAY’S WHAT TO WATCH:

Motorola Mobility is spun off today, trades under MMI on NYSE

President Obama will sign $1.4b food-safety bill today that marks the biggest change to oversight of the food industry since 1938 and sets up a funding fight with Republicans poised to take over the House.

Google is considering building a payment and advertising service that would let users buy milk and bread by tapping or waving their mobile phone against a register at checkout, two people familiar with the plans say. Service may debut this year

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01/03/11 05:04 PM EST

If Global Growth Slows, Could Commodities Still Charge Higher?

Conclusion: Supply constraints could drive many commodities higher, even if growth slows in 2011.

Positions: Long Oil via the etf OIL; Long Sugar via the etf SGG

We’ve been fairly vocal with our belief that global growth will slow sequentially in 2011, driven by the consumer slowing in the U.S., and emerging markets (China, Brazil, and the like) slowing due to monetary tightening as inflation rises. Perversely (as some would suggest), we remain bullish and, in fact, long in the Virtual Portfolio certain commodities heading into 2011. Normally, one would expect commodity prices to decline in line with slowing growth, but the key factor appears to be supply constraints for a number of key commodities.

Copper – According to the International Copper Study Group, world refined copper consumption exceeded supply by 436,000 tons between January and September this year. In the same period last year, the world deficit was 56,000 tons. In 2010, global consumption was the key factor, as it was up roughly 8%, while mine production was up a measly 0.8%. The net results of this, as is highlighted in the chart below, is that LME copper inventories have seen a dramatic decline since the start of 2010. So even if copper usage slows sequentially, low inventories combined with weak supply growth will likely continue to constrain the market and lead to higher copper prices heading into 2011.

Oil – Oil is in a similar setup to copper heading into 2011: while the rate of demand growth should slow if global growth slows, oil appears to be supply constrained. As our Energy Sector Head Lou Gagliardi notes:

“Turning to the Department of Energy, its energy agency (EIA) sees global crude oil demand growth outstripping supply in 2011: by roughly 630,000 b/d or supply falling short by ~0.7%. Although a slim margin, 2011’s forecast marks a sharp divergence from 2009 and 2010, when the EIA reported demand and supply in balance. For 2011, the EIA, forecasts -0.5% supply/production decline from non-OPEC regions, unlike the 2.1% increase seen in 2010 from 2009. Not surprising to us, the EIA sees declining supply in 2011 from 2010 worldwide across major crude basins; i.e. the U.S., U.K., Norway, Mexico, Russia, China, and Canada flat.”

The International Energy Administration echoes the point relating to non-OPEC production growth as they have cut in half from 2010 levels their 2011 production estimates, which will be primarily driven by declines form production in the Gulf of Mexico in the United States. While the OPEC cartel still has spare capacity, to the extent they can keep their members in line, oil supply should be increasingly constrained in 2011. The negative wild card for global supply could be if Russian production, which recently hit a new high, starts to slow.

Soft commodities – Soft commodities had one of their best years in recent memory in 2010 due to supply constraints and that looks poised to continue headed into 2010. Some key soft commodity supply data points to focus on heading into 2011 include:

Sugar – Brazil, overwhelmingly the world’s largest producer at 23.7% of global production, saw its production estimate for 2010/11 revised down (-1.3M) metric tons to 39.4M due to dry weather;

Corn – The Argentine corn crop is developing slower than expected and Argentina is the world’s second largest exporter of corn;

Cotton – World cotton stocks are projected to decline in 2011 due to lower U.S. production;

Soybeans – Argentina’s soybean production is expected to fall as much as 17% to 43 million tons in 2011 – 2012 due to the drought caused by La Nina;

Rice – Among other supply issues, an outbreak of cholera in Haiti’s rice fields will impact global supply heading into 2011.

Interestingly, despite our view of slowing growth into 2011, it seems that we are seeing evidence of supply constraints across the commodity complex that are poised to drive commodity prices higher in the face of a sequential slowdown in growth. Higher commodity prices and slower growth mean one thing: stagflation.

Daryl G. Jones

Managing Director

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01/03/11 04:02 PM EST

America's Armpits

This note was originally published
at 8am on January 03, 2011.
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“I know it's hard when you're up to your armpits in alligators to remember you came here to drain the swamp.”

-Ronald Reagan

Welcome back to a New Year. It’s Game Time.

While my New Year’s resolution is to remain as far away from professional politicians and academic charlatans as I possibly can, until this game changes I’ll have to remain focused on attempting to understand what Big Government Intervention can do to our markets.

President Obama seems keen on understanding more about what Ronald Reagan thought about the economy. Or at least that’s what the White House says he was reading about this past week. Lou Cannon’s President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime is officially out of stock on Amazon due to a surge in speculative Democrat buying.

Ironically enough, I read The Reagan I Knew by Bill Buckley a few weeks ago. Don’t worry, I’m neither Republican or Democrat. I’m just a Canadian-American looking for historical perspectives, accepting that they are often decorated with hyperbole.

What will be most interesting to me with this new Obama/Reagonomics Revolution thing is whether or not the President justifies a bloated US budget deficit by reminding the Republicans that “Ronnie used one.” After all, as Danilo Petranovich reminds us in the Introduction of Buckley’s book, “Reagan, of course, had promised to cut the size of government, and yet the budget deficit nearly doubled during his tenure.”

American storytelling and political hypocrisies aside, the non-fiction version of the fiscal New Year is that America is up to its armpits in deficits and debts. It’s time we “drain the swamp”, and I think we can all save and make money while we do it.

In term of percentage allocations, here’s how I have the Hedgeye Asset Allocation Model positioned for what we’ll be introducing as a Q1 Macro Theme in the coming weeks – American Sacrifice (fiscal reform):

US Cash = 61% (long US Dollar, UUP)

International FX = 18% (long Chinese Yuan, CYB)

International Equities = 9% (long Germany, EWG)

Commodities = 6% (long Oil, OIL; long Sugar, SGG)

US Equities = 3% (long Healthcare, XLV)

Fixed Income = 3% (long Treasury Inflation Protection, TIP)

For those of you who follow my day-to-day risk management moves closely, you’ll recognize that I dropped my Cash position from 70% to 61% last week and re-allocated that Cash to Commodities and US Equities. This doesn’t mean I’m bullish on US Equities up here. It means I’m bullish on the Energy and Healthcare sectors at these prices.

There are obviously plenty of negative mean-reversion risks associated with buying anything US Equities after an +86% rally from the March 2009 lows. If you dare to chase equity oriented yields up here, we think you need to protect against 3 critical risk factors that are going to be perpetuated by Big Government Intervention:

Congress

Fed Policy

Inflation

If we’re going to attempt to find the political spine to “drain the swamp”, these 3 factors will remain omnipresent. Congress will be getting paid to push their own book. Fed Policy rhetoric will trade like a NYC hedge fund. And yes, Inflation, will remain a policy.

Energy (XLE) and Healthcare (XLV) companies have leverage to inflation. Higher selling prices, in theory, help these companies expand margins. While the SP500 is running close to peak margins, these two sectors aren’t. There’s some mean-reversion opportunity there in equity prices for these sectors as a result.

In Energy, I’m not long the sector – I’m long the stocks. We remain bullish on China National Offshore (CEO), Suncor (SU) and Lukoil (LUKOY). In the immediate-term, the Energy sector ETF (XLE) is overbought with immediate-term TRADE support down at $66.29. In Healthcare, immediate-term TRADE lines of support and resistance for the XLV are $31.03 and $31.91, respectively.

From an asset allocation perspective (and I mean your money, not some theoretical Big Broker’s high net fee, commission, and compensation model), being bearish on Congress and bullish on its inflation policy is fairly straightforward to express. If I had to be in one or the other, I’d be in US Equities over US Treasury Bonds here. Fortunately, I don’t have to be in either.

What I am most bullish on is the hard earned Cash that my family and firm has earned over the course of the last 3 years. No, we weren’t the super duper top US Equity performer of the Year in 2010 (although I did win the Forbes stock picking contest!)… but we made money for the 3rd consecutive year, and there’s nothing that smells like America’s Armpits about that.

My immediate term support and resistance lines in the SP500 are now 1249 and 1263, respectively.

Tales of the Global Inflation Tape Part II: China, Brazil and India

Conclusion: Inflation continues to percolate within these economies and we expect additional monetary policy tightening in each country over the intermediate term. Furthermore, we expect inflation to continue to remain a headwind for many countries globally and for that to lead to slowing economic growth globally (via policy tightening).

Chairman Bernanke’s experiment with Quantitative Guessing continues to have unintended consequences for the global economy, due to the impact of the equation highlighted below:

A brief review of global economic data points highlights three very key countries’ struggles with inflation (China, India and Brazil). While the divergence between each country’s response reminds us that both inflation and monetary policy are local, analyzing them collectively allows us to derive the equation laid out above.

Let us briefly visit each country’s headlines and data points from today’s global macro run for a quick update on the global inflation front. Not surprisingly, not much has changed from a grading perspective since we originally published this piece on November 24th:

Country: China; Policy Stance: Proactive

On a relative basis, China has been particularly proactive in their fight with inflation of late, hiking interest rates twice in the last 2.5 months, raising bank’s reserve requirements, and announcing potential price controls and supply rationing in its food market. Since we last published this note, China has continued to proactively fight speculation and today’s PMI report shows early signs of success.

Manufacturing PMI (a proxy for demand) slowed in December to 53.9 vs. 55.2 prior with the Input Prices component backing off a 29-month high, coming in at 66.7 vs. 73.5 in November. Dampening some of the positive headway made in today’s report was an acceleration in Non-Manufacturing PMI to 56.5 vs. 53.2 prior, which suggests Chinese monetary policy has more tightening to do before growth has slowed enough to rein in both inflation and inflation expectations.

We continue to have conviction that growth is slowing and inflation will remain a headwind in China over the intermediate term, necessitating more tightening measures which are likely to have an incremental drag on Chinese (and therefore global) GDP growth. Chinese Central Bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan agrees, pledging Friday to shift Chinese monetary policy to a “prudent” stance in order to tackle inflation in the New Year.

Country: Brazil; Policy Stance: Reactive

When we last published this report, Brazil’s monetary policy graded out less than favorably due to its relatively late reaction (compared to China) in fighting inflation. It appears Brazil is finally ready to shift the fight into high gear in January, after raising reserve requirements early last month. Analysis of Brazilian interest rate swaps suggests traders are betting incoming Central Bank President Alexandre Tombini will hike the benchmark Selic rate +50bps to 11.25% in his fist meeting as chief on January 18-19.

New President Dilma Rousseff, who only recently brought about widespread concern in the Brazilian bond market because of the perception that she would fail to contain inflation, is joining in on the fight, pledging to cut government spending by $15B – a sum that exceeded investor expectations. Over the weekend, she also pledged to tackle the “plague” of inflation:

“To ensure the continuation of the current economic growth cycle we need to ensure stability, especially price stability… We won’t allow under any hypothesis that this plague returns to eat away our economic tissue and hurt the poorest families.”

The hope is that she’s willing to back her rhetoric with prudent policy action, and to some extent, she’s shown signs of this of late. On the flip side, however, we see that the Brazilian Congress just approved an increase in the minimum salary – a metric that determines both the nation’s minimum wage and transfer payments. For reference, the last adjustment to the Bolsa Familia program was a +10% increase in 2009.

Given that a broad-based wage hike would augment already-robust Brazilian consumer demand, we would expect to see more monetary policy tightening and offsetting fiscal restraint elsewhere in the government’s budget over the intermediate term.

Elsewhere on the demand front, we see Brazil’s Manufacturing PMI came in at 52.4 for December, a +2.5 increase over November’s 49.9 reading. Brazil is in a setup very similar to China: while we have conviction that growth will continue to slow throughout 1H11, it is robust enough to continue providing demand-side inflationary pressures.

Brazil’s CPI (as measured by the unofficial FGV IGP-M Index) accelerated in December to +11.32% YoY driven by higher food prices that are now consuming one-third of poor Brazilian’s incomes. By comparison, the Benchmark ICPA Index accelerated to a 21-month high in November, coming in at +5.63% YoY.

Country: India; Policy Stance: Inactive; Hurtful

India continues to lag in its bout with taming inflation, opting instead for the “wait and see” approach with regard to implementing another round(s) of tightening. Having shifted from his hawkish stance (six rate hikes in 2010) to a more relaxed position, Reserve Bank of India Governor Duvvuri Subarrao has held true to his November promise that additional rate hikes are not in India’s near-term future.

That would be fine if India had inflation under control; unfortunately, the latest WPI reading of +7.5% YoY suggests India is far from achieving its target of +4-4.5% YoY inflation. It is, however, a marginal improvement nonetheless, though expecting an additional +300bps drop from here absent any further tightening would be reckless at best. Moreover, food inflation continues to plague the 828 million Indians who live on less than $2 per day at PPP, accelerating to +14.44% YoY in the second week of December.

Compounding this blatant lack of vigilance is the RBI’s decision to add fuel to the fire by buying back government bonds from Indian lenders with the intention of increasing liquidity in a cash-strapped banking system that has been struggling to meet demand for loans. In December, the RBI pumped nearly 414B rupees ($9.3B) into India’s financial system via sovereign bond purchases (a.k.a. Quantitative Easing).

Fueling speculation when inflation is running at nearly twice the target rate is not our idea of prudent monetary policy. We expect further tightening ahead, but only after inflation becomes the problem it was in 1H10. For this reason, we continue to remain bearish on Indian equities over the intermediate-term TREND. We are, however, bullish on many commodities (corn, sugar, oil, etc.) as countries like China and India look to accelerate food and energy imports to ease any supply shortages that are perpetuating rising prices in their economies.

Darius Dale

Analyst

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